Personalized Pricing, By Olga Kharif

Target Corporation offers its customers a vast variety of products, well also providing a service. The corporation owns or has exclusive rights to many different brands ranging from groceries to clothing. For example, some brands that can only be found at Target are Archer Farms which provides food merchandise, Merona which supplies clothing and Room Essentials which provides home goods (Target, 2015, para.2). The shopping experience that Target provides can be defined as a service. The stores shopping experience is a service, since it cannot be patented, interaction with the customer occurs, it is heterogeneous, along with perishable and time dependent and contains the package of features (Chase & Jacobs, 2013, p.9). Target is a popular consumer destination because it provides both a service and goods making it ideal for one

In a day of, “I want it now and I’m willing to pay for it,” a shopping center has to offer a variety of stores, and also have several options. The shoe shopper will go to the place with 5 shoe stores before they go to the place with only 1. They may not realize that of the 5 available shoe stores; only 1 is in their price range, but satisfying a wider variety of consumers will help the mall broaden the shopper’s experience. But it is important to remember that shoppers are price sensitive, so not only do you need a variety of stores offering a variety of products, but you also need to be able to provide a variety of price points so you don’t limit your shopper demographics.

From the time it opened, Aldi has expanded the number of product assortments that allow consumers to find nearly anything they need to supply and feed their families. Aldi developed a strong marketing program and decentralized their pricing and assortments that also include some well-known products. Aldi’s begins its value propositions to shoppers with its amazingly low prices. Their “hard” discount pricing, averages about 30% below standard supermarkets like Winn-Dixie or Kroger’s (Brick, 2016). They attribute their success and growth to the “hard discount” model as it has demonstrated to be highly effective. Aldi is different than “large” discounters like Walmart where Walmart’s varieties are limited in size and led by private label products, and investments are made in stores atmosphere, unfortunately, resulting in lackluster customer service. This allows “hard” discounters like Aldi to win the grocery price war by greater margins than Walmart, making Aldi a major competitor of Walmart (Bartone,

Thirdly, Trader Joe’s stores are small and located in non-prime locations, which holds fixed operating costs at bay. Furthermore, the company is able to generate the industry’s highest sales per square feet in its small sized stores. In an effort to diversify from its competitors, Trader Joe’s also relies on a non-traditional marketing strategy. Completely neglecting conventional marketing techniques like commercials or promotional offers, the company focuses on unique and store specific in-store marketing with its newsletter and the occasional radio ad being its major means of communication with its customers. The Trader Joe’s brand with its vast fan base is naturally another part of the company’s competitive advantage.

Grocery shopping is more diversified and evolved than ever before. Individuals across the nation have access to everything from exotic products to unique delivery services. Often, specialty stores have limited locations whereas specialty services have a limited reach. However, two retailers have expanded to hundreds of locations while adhering to unexpected market positioning for previously untargeted market segments. Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s have become household names while also innovating beyond regional and national traditional chains. Despite comparable size in

In 1975, Hi-Value Supermarkets became a division of Hall Consolidated, a privately owned wholesale and retail food distributor. In 2002, Hi-Value had sales of $192.2 million, which was the smallest out of the three supermarket chains owned by Hall Consolidated. Although Hi-Value is considered small against industry standards, they were the number one or two ranked supermarket chain in each of its trade markets measured through market share. The primary problem that Hi-Value has developed is that they are the highest priced compared to the competitors within the region. The Hi-Value Supermarket Shopper Interview Results (Exhibit 7 in case) demonstrates this through the question “Liked most about other regular store,” the most popular answer across the board was “Price.” So what is Hi-Value supposed to do?

In some companies who are not highly set in their ways this can lead to necessary changes being made in those companies. For others who are set in their ways may give a the case a positive vote.(Book)

Our survey shows that full-time juniors who commute to campus, who are first-time buyers of the bookstore. Because our application promotes a convenient way to purchase books, our survey proves that these students have a high value of concern for when the books will be received. This is shown by a combined percentage of 48.39%; 9.68% who value convenience a great deal, and 38.71% a lot. Our features such as on-campus pick up will be a highly effective when promoting our application. These students also have a tendency to purchase online, showing that 51.61% say definitely yes. Our phone application allows students to purchase their books on the go and allow commuters the lenience of off-campus purchasing. One of our best options for our target segmentation is that we offer a variety of options regarding rent and e-books. This is the same model the bookstore uses but we digitize it. According to our survey, a majority of 38.71% of these students want a great variety. The most impactful variable is the price. Price is overwhelmingly 67.71% a great deal to this target segmentation and it fits perfectly with our price modeling plan and our app will be price matching with Amazon, Chegg, and other online bookstores. Our target segmentation is going to be first-time buyers, our research shows that 45.16% of these students have never purchased a textbook from the bookstore. It would be unfair to assume they never heard of a college bookstore so the other possibility is that the reputation of the bookstore is well-known to be overpriced and unpopular. Finally, because our application does not reflect the drastic overpricing of the bookstore and capitalizing on the convenience of purchasing books we believe that students who commute and are of junior classification are our best target for maximizing

In this case, Blake Ives, the CEO of Upscale Markets, was at a crossroad of whether start to build an online store to seek further growing profit. Upscale Markets was a seven-store local grocery chain in Dallas, TX. Ives was inspired by the huge success of a virtual store project in subways running by Tesco named Home Plus in Korea. They showed the products visually by using monitor in

Critical assessment of Superior Supermarket’s current pricing practices, recent consumer research, competitor behavior, and a SWOT analysis can give credence to a more effective pricing strategy and help assess whether a ‘Everyday Low Prices’ strategy is justifiable.

By choosing to implement “Everyday low-pricing” strategy to all Hi- Value Supermarket products in Centralia, Missouri, Hi- Value would begin direct competition with Harrison’s via most reasonable prices. According to the Exhibit 6 found on page 506, data shows that, Harrison’s is a market leader with 36 percent of customers agreeing that Harrison’s has the most reasonable prices , while customers rated Hi- Value with only 7percent . Also in this data we can see that Hi Value scored lowest on best overall variety with 2 percent while Missouri Mart came in at 74 percent. With 13,500 households retaining an average income of a mere $36,000/ year,

Have you ever wondered why retailers have you leaving with more items than you intended to have? It is all because the marketing strategies that have been outlined in the stores that the consumers don’t even notice. In the texts, Power of Habit: Why We Do What We do in Life by Charles Duhigg and The Science of Shopping, Malcolm Gladwell explain how companies target consumer shopping habits and the significance of marketing. While reading through Duhigg and Gladwells texts, I had made a trip to Target and analyzed how they strategically market to their consumers and discovered that they are very effective in employing the Invariant right, shopping gender gap, sandwiching and Guest I.D.’s. One of the most effective strategies is the Invariant

The Internet has changed the way we do virtually everything, including the way we shop. However, shopping is not the only thing that has changed. In the last decade we have changed the way, we apply for loans, study, and even plan a vacation. Doing any of these things would have been impossible a few decades ago. At present, online banking, paying bills, ordering new services, and shopping online have become part of our daily lives. Traditional brick-and-mortar stores have been around much longer than online stores, but we cannot deny that online shopping is giving the traditional stores competition. Many consumers still choose to shop at regular brick-and-mortar stores because they like to see and

Throughout history there have been many successful companies as well as companies that have been a debacle. The success of the company has to do with the management and how it executes its strategy. If the management is ineffective, the company will most likely fail; however, if the company has good management it is more likely to prosper. There are many responsibilities that a manager must complete, chief among them are the four functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (PowerPoint). In order for the company to be successful the management must fulfill all four functions. In some case not all four functions are met to expectation, with the results that the company to be not as successful as it could be if they

This case was written by P. Indu, under the direction of Vivek Gupta, IBS Center for Management Research. It was compiled